THE P RTAL
August 2018 Page 24
Did Humanae Vitae cause bitter division in the Church ?
Geoffrey Kirk thinks not
Last month saw the fiftieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae , that most controversial of encyclicals . It was blamed at the time for causing bitter division in the Church , and subsequently for causing the precipitate decline in Mass attendance of the 1970s .
But there is a problem .
Why should the restatement of a perennial doctrine cause division and defection ? ( HV , after all , was far more accommodating in its language than Casti Connubii , issued as a riposte to the laxity of the Lambeth Conference of 1930 ). Nothing was different on July 26 , 1968 from what it had been on July 24 .
The clue to the conundrum is expectation .
Already in 1968 the sexual revolution had gained a sufficient momentum for secularists ( and many Catholics ) to suppose that change was inevitable , and that the Church must necessarily fall into line . This sense of an irresistible unfolding agenda meant that for many a reaffirmation of the Church ’ s traditional position was unimaginable . There was bound to be , at the least , a softening of attitudes . After all , the demographics clearly showed that even in Catholic Italy and ultra-Catholic Poland , couples were defiantly using condoms and the pill . Population control in Africa and the developing world demanded easily available birth control . Instead of condemning condoms , Catholics should be giving them out .
Was Pope Paul , then , merely an ecclesiastical Canute ?
It is incumbent on modern day Catholics , with their more recent experience , to decide for themselves .
* Total annual abortions in England and Wales have increased 111 % since 1969 , the first full year that abortion was legal . The total number of annual abortions more than doubled between 1969 and 1971 . There were 205,598 abortions reported in 2007 , which is the highest total on record .
Paul VI courageously withstood this vox populi , vox dei argument . He stood as a remora against vulgar expectation , and in doing so proved the wisdom of perennial Catholicism . HV did not turn the tide of expectation and inevitability ; but it put down a marker . The Church was not obliged to embrace the unfolding agenda of sexual ‘ liberation ’ and would hold the line against it .
St Paul VI did not live to see , as we have seen , that agenda remorselessly unfold . He could not have foreseen the abortion epidemic * ( strangely allied to a significant increase in births out of wedlock ), or the fragmentation of the family or the gender reassignment explosion of recent years .